Beware: More Hill rancor ahead

Last year’s congressional session, derided by many as the least productive ever, is about to get a run for its money.

Despite ending the year with a glimmer of bipartisanship after passing a budget agreement and defense bill, lawmakers and aides are predicting this year will be filled mostly with show votes and partisan bickering unlikely to abate until the midterm elections.

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If the first legislative week of 2014 is a guide, those skeptics could very well be proven right. The Senate fell into a familiar state of paralysis, unable to agree on reviving emergency unemployment benefits and instead shifting to insular debates over the chamber’s leadership and procedure.

The 113th Congress was not always on track to set a new low bar for lawmaking. For a while it looked like the Senate might set a tone of consensus for the more rancorous House to follow. Indeed, it was barely six months ago that the Senate could brag of passing major legislation with strong majorities to reshape policy on immigration, agriculture and water infrastructure.

But with rare exception, the chamber has been trending negative since passing immigration reform in June. The well first grew toxic as Democrats warned they would change the Senate rules to limit minority power, a threat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) made good on in November, provoking Republicans to deploy whatever procedural tools remained at their disposal to slow the agenda of President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats.

The nasty atmosphere only deepened last week when Reid refused to allow votes on GOP amendments to the unemployment legislation, prompting criticism from even moderate Republicans that the Senate is being run in an increasingly heavy-handed fashion.

“There was a time when the majority worked with the minority not because they had to but because it made good policy. And we’re not doing that anymore. And I think it’s because of the leadership. I’m really quite disturbed with the direction that the Senate has taken. It makes it very difficult to work around here,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

Reid has largely shrugged off the criticism as arcane and contrived given what Democrats see as the emergency nature of the unemployment bill.

“You go explain to somebody that’s long-term unemployed in the state of Colorado, state of Illinois, state of anyplace and [Republicans] say they didn’t vote for this because they didn’t get to offer unlimited amendments,” Reid told Republicans who challenged him during an unusually heated debate on the Senate floor Thursday.

Still, Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson cracked the door open on Friday to progress and said Reid is “absolutely willing for the Senate to consider a reasonable number of relevant amendments from Republicans.”

The news did not seem to encourage the GOP.

“Their position seems to change by the hour, so it’s really hard to keep up,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Some Republicans are threatening to block consideration of nearly any bill that comes before them unless Reid opens up the amendment process, setting the stage for weeklong stalemates in which votes are rarely taken and the Senate does little but wrangle over process and procedure.

That’s creating bipartisan dread over the possibility that this pattern endures through November, when voters will decide whether to return Democrats to a ninth year of majority status.

“I’d rather see more content on the floor than less content. So you know I hope we can figure out a way to bring comity back to the Senate, and I hope that we as a majority party will ultimately be willing to let Republican amendments [come] to the floor,” said freshman Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a former minority member of the House, where the majority rarely extends an olive branch to the other party.